11 July 2009Laugh it up, furball.

Ten imaginary dollars to whoever knows what movie that title refers to.

And now for our feature presentation…

In general, I consider myself to have a fairly discerning sense of humor. If a guy jumps off a building and lands on a rail on his crotch, all he’ll get from me is a mildly pained look. I think I could count on one hand the number of times I laughed during “Me, Myself, and Irene.” A major goal of my life is to never see any of the Jackass movies. I hate Demetri Martin of Comedy Central’s “Important Things.” On the other hand, reading more than three Dilbert comic strips in a row leaves me lightheaded with an aching diaphragm. If it’s snarky, satirical, or just really suprising, I’m probably laughing.

That’s why a recent discovery about myself has left me concerned: I laugh at any and every cat gag imaginable.

There is pretty much nothing a cat can do that I will not laugh at. If at any point in any movie there is the sound of a cat yowling, I laugh. Sometimes I’ll make myself laugh for ten minutes or so just by imitating the noise to myself. I’ve been watching cat videos on youtube for half an hour and have laughed at every single one of them. I can’t help it; I think that kitties fighting, small kitties facing off with big dogs, cats sleeping in sinks, cats in piles of clothes, cats on their backs, cats chasing anything at all, are HILARIOUS.

(Here’s one that never gets old…)

And it’s not just media cats that do it for me. I’ve had absolutely no success disciplining my own cats because I think that everything they do is funny. When they follow me into the bathroom and try to sit on my lap while I’m attending to business, I talk to them in a high-pitched voice and then laugh. When they start scratching the couch while looking at me in a wary sort of way, like they know what they’re doing and also know that it’s wrong, I think it’s fantastic. When my ex opened the cabinet under the sink to get the bag of dry food only to discover that one cat had chewed her way to unlimited crunchy goodness, I laughed for like five minutes straight. When the other cat runs around the apartment in a seemingly rabid state, knocking things over and scattering important papers in his herculean efforts to catch a fly, I will put Family Guy on pause just to watch him.

My only comfort in this disturbing situation is that my ex, who is the co-parent of my cats and also a fairly high-powered lawyer, is just as bad. When one or both of the cats would wake him up at three in the morning, he would just say “kitties!” in a would-be scolding tone, smile, and pet them.

Ok, I have to go. There’s a kitty chowing down in my bag of Tostitos, and pretty soon I’ll be shaking and tearing up too much to even see my computer screen.